Hillary Acheampong volunteers as a nurse aboard a hospital ship in her own country
She is Ghanaian. The patients she cares for are her neighbours.
When the ship serves a nurse's own country, the distinction between helping and being helped stops making sense.
A nurse from Ghana, on a ship in Ghana
Hillary Acheampong trained and works as a nurse in Ghana. When the Global Mercy arrived to begin a field service there, she joined the volunteer crew.
Nursing on a hospital ship covers the whole span of a patient's stay: admission and screening, the ward before surgery, recovery afterwards, and the weeks of dressings, feeding and physiotherapy that follow.
What a local nurse brings that a visitor cannot
She speaks the languages her patients speak. She knows what a family is going home to, what the journey back involves, and what a patient will realistically be able to do once they are there.
That knowledge changes clinical decisions, not just conversations.
Nursing is the largest volunteer need
Surgeons perform the operation. Nurses carry the weeks either side of it, and nursing is consistently the role Mercy Ships needs in the greatest numbers.
